Alan Gottlieb

What’s clear about today’s election is that big money backing various candidates believes the stakes are high. Why else would campaign contributions to Denver candidates directly and through Independent Expenditure Committees this cycle be approaching $2 million, and will perhaps surpass the $2.28 million spent in 2019?

A teachers union-backed Independent Expenditure Committee is going deeply negative in Denver school board races, with misleading claims and glaring factual errors.

From the beginning of school in late August through the end of September, DPS, (like school systems around the country) has experienced a significant spike in violence and drug violations in and around its schools. The Denver school board last year ordered the removal of 18 Denver Police Department School Resource Officers effective this school year.

Latest campaign contribution filings show that the four DCTA-backed candidates have all raised significantly more money than their competitors. And, no surprise: The lion’s share of that money has come from $20,000-plus donations from the DCTA.

Apparently, school performance has become another fact-free zone, where ideology, rumor, and innuendo are more important than evidence. The political right in recent years has mastered this sad and dangerous strategy, but when it comes to testing, the left is showing that two can play that game.

Dear Dr. Marrero, Welcome to Denver and your first day on the job as superintendent of Denver Public Schools. here are several pieces of unsolicited advice.

There are already rumblings of dissatisfaction with the the three finalists to become Denver’s next schools superintendent. But it isn’t exactly a plum job at this moment in time.

Coming from a school board member who consistently trumpets her commitment to community voice, House Bill 21-1295 reeks not only of pique at the state board but hypocrisy as well.

The hundreds of community members who rallied last week to support school innovation zones are right to worry that the school board will ignore their pleas.

If we can at least agree that the 2020-21 school year has exacerbated opportunity gaps and increased the likelihood that students suffering the consequences of those gaps have fallen farther behind their more affluent peers, then optional, full-time summer school provides an obvious, if partial, remedy.